Torah Truth

From generation to generation Jews celebrate the unparalleled event in human history recorded in our Torah as a Divine intervention aimed at giving us freedom from the bondage of slavery. But is it really so? I want to bring the reader’s attention to the text of Torah and see for yourself that this idea is too short and truncated compared to the real Divine Lesson. I will try to reveal all the depth of the lesson for Israel, for all nations, for individuals and for all times.

What is Freedom?

When we read, say or think about the word freedom we all understand it in it’s natural simplistic way – not to be bound by anybody’s will but by our own only. This common interpretation, as is, cannot even be applied to a human life in general as any deep analysis will show that any human being at any point of history in any society is and always will be bound to the will of the others through their established rules: tribe, congregation, nation, king or pharaoh, government, political party, religious community, etc. While understanding this, people normally tend to allow some exceptions to be introduced into this definition to fit to the reality of the world affairs. Usually such exceptions, as a modest set of behavioral limits, boil down to the obvious restrains such as don’t kill, don’t steal, etc. Many will allow the definition of freedom even to co-exist with such social obligations as to pay taxes and serving in the army for the betterment of the whole nation. There is also the obvious implied expectation that a free man surely enjoys freedom from suffering, security to his well being and absence of somebody’s will putting him in danger…

All these assumptions, when associated with the story of Exodus, do not stay. The reader is encouraged to be sincere in trying to understand the realities of the Exodus as recorded. Only then your mind will be purified from the misleading habitual patterns of thinking to become ready for the profound Divine Message…

The Real Exodus.

The triumph of the slaves ended up as soon as they got out of Egypt. After they left Sukkot, Israel is led into the wilderness:

God led the people around by the way of the wilderness (desert) along the Red Sea (Exodus 13:18)

Pharaoh will say regarding the children of Israel, ‘They are entangled in the land. They are trapped in the desert. (Exodus 14:3)

Now, to understand the situation Israel faced right after leaving the Egypt, we must detach ourselves from who we are at this moment (while reading,  sitting in comfort, satisfied with food, shelter, security and all the “normalities” of our modern lives) and we must turn on our imagination to see ourselves in that situation. As Torah tells us that Pharaoh found out that Israel is trapped in the desert at the Red Sea shore, it is the same what children of Israel see with their own eyes: “the Freedom Valley” (what an irony in this name compared to reality of how this place looks like…) wilderness of the desert at the sea shore on one side, rocky mountains around them and a valley path leading to this place. (For more vivid picture of the actual place, I intend to write a post in the near future pointing the Google map coordinates to the actual places on the path of Exodus).

As soon as the Pharaoh’s army approached the valley leading to the trapped people of Israel, the whole picture looks really deadly in the eyes of the Jews.  How easy it is for us, reading the text in modern comfort, to be “smart” in our judgment! “Don’t they remember that God made all those miracles to save them?” – we think in our “wisdom” rooted in the fact that we know the outcome from reading the text many times any way, and our “educated mind” already expects well known follow up results. Stop your mind for a moment!

Nobody among the children of Israel at this moment of truth knows what will happen next. See yourself trapped in the described spot, Pharaoh’s army is approaching and what outcome could possibly ring in your mind ? Let’s be honest – mind will ring: dead end. This is the reason why Jews cried out to God and at the same time complained to Moses accusing him for taking them out of Egypt.

They said to Moses, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you treated us this way, to bring us forth out of Egypt? (Exodus 14:11)

Isn’t this the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians?’ For it were better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.” (Exodus 14:12)

Being sincere, does this situation at this moment look as a “path to freedom“? When you are in the deadly situation with no possible “visual” light in front of you, are you smart enough in your own trials expecting the miracles from God, or are you ruled by your emotions? Assuming that you consider yourself to be religious, don’t you ever question God for “why are you doing this to me“? As we know the outcome after the chapter of history has been written and sealed, it happens that it was to be a deadly trap for Egypt instead and only a temporal trial for Israel. But we all live only in the current moment perceived by our mind limited by the memory on one side and a foresight of the future (or the opposite – complete lack of it) on another.

This trial of Israel ends the moment the waters of the sea split in front of their eyes and the emotion of despair is getting replaced with awe of Divine Power and Goodness. After the crossing of the sea and after witnessing the destruction of the most powerful army in the world at that time, Israel realized the full scope of the sense of Freedom … but not for a long … more of the “taste of freedom” is yet to come …

(The lesson for our daily life drawn from the description of the moment preceding the Divine Deliverance at the Red Sea will be posted later in a separate article: “Real Exodus: Trapped in wilderness – the moment of  the Now“)

The Real Exodus – more trials

Moses led Israel towards the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. When they came to Marah, they couldn’t drink from the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. The people murmured against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”(Exodus 15:22-24)

Should the people just being freed from the slavery be provided such basics for survival as drinking water? Why is it, when they eventually found water – it is happened to be undrinkable? Do you know how important water is for humans anywhere but even more so in the conditions of the desert? Again, like before, we must comprehend the situation as it is now, in the current moment, stopping the mind from interference with suggestion of what you know is to come as this suggestions cannot come to mind of the children of Israel.

Later on the hunger broke out:

The whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and against Aaron in the wilderness. And the children of Israel said to them, “We wish that we had died by the hand of Yahweh in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, when we ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly by starvation.” (Exodus 16:2-3)

God will surely intervene, but they don’t know about this now, after the devastation of the people who’s children and elders suffered tremendously from thirst and starvation and they broke out in despair as their stamina reached it’s natural limit. While desert takes it’s toll, the Divine Power seems to ignore …

Later again the same:

All the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, by their journeys, according to God’s commandment, and encamped in Rephidim; but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test God?” The people were thirsty for water there; and the people complained against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst?” (Exodus 17:1-3)

It is important to understand the situation: hot air, hot sand, venomous scorpions and spiders, no vegetation around, dying livestock and sick among children and elders – this is a true immediate real picture of the “newly acquired freedom“. Hardly even the very recent past Divine Experiences can help as of NOW your family is facing death yet again. You can talk much about faith and any Israelite back then will agree that God did indeed help in the past, but as of right now they are dying!

Without getting into more details, enough just to mention the story of 12 spies and the Divine dictum that all of the adults of Israel will perish in the wilderness without ever seeing a decent life and so it was …

So, again what is Freedom?

We must conclude in either two possible ways: either that Israelites in truth did not get any freedom as all adults perished, or that we have to redefine the meaning of Freedom as applied to human life and that of the nation. To prove that the former assumption would be wrong and we have to stick to the latter, it is enough to recall that all the participants of that story vanished and yet, we as a Nation, descendants of those Israelites, survived all the tribulations of the history of humankind to this day. And our Passover celebration marks not only Divine Interference in our history but the birth of the Nation, which, as history shows, is Eternal.

Now we are left with the only possible conclusion: the purpose of Exodus, as a Divine phenomenon, was/is such a Redemption, such a Freedom, the meaning of which we are yet to come to understand. And for that we first need to understand who we are. This implies understanding of human mind.

Our lives are guided by egoistic minds preconditioned from the childhood through a particular life experience and circumstances. Some experienced a secular upbringing, others – religious. Some experienced life started in rich family, others in average or poor. Some absorbed traditions of this culture/ethnicity/religion, others of different culture/ethnicity/religion. Within each category of the lifestyle we will find a multitude diversity of the habitual patterns of thinking, acting and believing. The environment we are raised in and live in through our mental formation, greatly influences our set of beliefs and makes us what we are – a human mind governed by embedded in us a set of habitual patterns of rights and wrongs. In large part these habitual patterns all have the aim – the good for my body and for my senses, and at the larger extent, good for my children, for my family. Even those who’s aim in life include the much larger goals of the welfare of the whole nation, it is still based on the egoistic habitual thinking patterns developed since childhood in regards to this goal.

Back then, in Egypt’s Goshen region, the Israelites lived mainly for the same goals as we all live today – caring for our bodily needs, our security, security of our families and, if our life is not too heavy and our ego is not too limiting, we include all our nation in our thinking. The large part of such daily concerns include serving those others who stand higher in social hierarchy,  for otherwise it is not possible to satisfy our primary goals. So we serve others directly (by our labor) or indirectly (by paying taxes to): local and central government, king or pharaoh, local community or democratic republic, our work bosses in whatever form, and religious or political leaders. In other words there are always people whom we serve in direct or indirect ways and this has no exception but only for those who isolate themselves into the complete solitude of the caves or wilderness, away from human society.

How much do we know about Children of Israel lives as slaves in Egypt? This is what we learn from their own words:

We wish that we had died by the hand of God in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of fresh meat, when we ate our fill of bread. (Exodus 16:3)

… and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us meat to eat? We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for free; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. but now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all except this manna to look on. (Numbers 11:4-6)

As we can see the very basic needs of the slaves were satisfied. Until the harsh Pharaoh’s decree resulted in the slaughter of the male newborns, there Israel multiplied exceedingly and as we see from large number of the Nation coming our of Egypt, their family households were still maintained and many children were raised.  Heavy burden of the slave labor should not be diminished, yet we see that until the first meeting between Moses and Pharaoh, the work task was reasonable: for example, Israelites were obligated to make as many bricks as it was reasonably possible with the help of other laborers (other slaves, not Israelites) who gathered straw for them. To claim that their task as slaves was reasonable is not our opinion but words of Torah as seen in the incident of Israelite supervisors encounter Moses after their situation became worse:

And they said to them (to Moses and Aaron), May the Lord take note of you and be your judge; for you have given Pharaoh and his servants a bad opinion of us, putting a sword in their hands for our destruction. (Exodus 5:21)

In their own mind the daily duties of the slaves was kind of “norm” to live with and content with as long as it does not become worse. Serving human masters was (still is) the norm of individuals and the Nation as a whole. The limits of what is considered “normal” or “not normal” embedded in our minds through environment we are raised and live in. At different times of history and different places on Earth people develop their “normal” habitual lifestyle and thinking in such harsh environment as Soviet concentration camps, African jungle, extreme modern slavery of the North Korea or strict sharia society of Saudi Arabia. As a part of this “normal mentality” there is always acceptance of serving human masters, even those who would be considered despots by outsiders.

The phenomenon of Exodus, through Divine Revelation, provided a new direction for the evolution of human mind. It was meant to replace the human master over the Nation of Israel with Divine Master – the Creator Himself. God’ put it this way in the main Jewish  prayer – Shma Israel:

I am the One who brought you out of Egypt to be God to you …

Notice: God did not say ” for you to be free”. The Almighty did not say ” for you to have a better life” or anything of that nature. The only purpose of Exodus is “For Him to be God to us“, to do that means  our own mental work to change our “habitual mental patterns” from serving other masters towards serving God first and foremost.

Israel was taken out of slavery in order to serve the Creator of this world instead of serving human master, the Pharaoh. This is a radical mental adjustment from serving human masters who currently are the strongest ones in this world, to serving the Creator who is eternally the only World Power. And to facilitate such drastic change, all the Divine Miracles were produced in front of the eyes of Israel, in the eyes of Egypt and eventually to the knowledge of all the world at that time. And all the harsh trials put on Israel only show that it is not for the bodily satisfaction alone the Exodus happened (as is mistakenly understood by the word Freedom often used in Passover Haggadah, yet this word has never been used in Torah in relation to this story) but, instead,  for learning the lesson – the recognition of the Ruler of the Universe as the Only Master over Israel who alone can take away, put on trial or deliver and save.

“Only the slave of God is truly free.” (Yehuda Halevi)

We are to become His slaves, His servants, His beloved, His children, His employees, all of the above at the same time instead of serving human masters. The more we understand this and the more we accept this Divine Lesson, the easier for us will be to accept any harsh lessons in order to deserve the Ultimate Bliss of seeing the Divine Glory (as a whole Israel witnessed at the time), to experience His Revelation similar to the Mt. Sinai or hearing His Voice as our Prophets experienced, for any of these experiences are far and beyond of any bodily satisfactions we can experience in bodily life. And if we do change our mind to put God into the center of everything we do, there will come a “side effect” to it: the material gifts, security and bodily satisfaction just as our initially undeveloped heart desired.

Failure to understand this Divine Lesson, failure to recognize God as the only Master to serve and the Only Master from whom to expect goodness for ourselves, later, at the time of the Prophet Samuel, brought Israel to another downfall: Israel demanded a human king “just like other people have“. Israel wanted another human ruler (I guess expected to be somewhat better than Egypt’s Pharaoh …). At first Samuel perceived this as a result of dissatisfaction with his judgment over people so he complained to God. God assured him that Israel rejected not Samuel but God Himself by demanding a human master. The outcome was as the saying goes: be careful to request from God … for your request might be granted. And it did indeed. Israel suffered many losses under the rule of the first king of Israel – Saul.

So what? We don’t serve human bosses any more?

Sure we do. With permission of our Grand Master – God. As long as they, the human masters, don’t breach His Laws. Because God is the Master above them. And while serving Him (following His Laws) above anybody else, as a part of bodily life, we might serve different human bosses in our lives. Yet all our life must be tuned up with Him. This is as if God is our only King but the human authorities (prime ministers or presidents or kings or Pharaohs, etc.) are no more for us than  supervisors temporarily appointed by God (if they match such a position. If they fit well in their position (regardless whether they understand their true role or not) we serve them as they deserve. If they do not fit in that position, we reject serving them. Good example for the right attitude is Mordechai from the Book of Ester – the Purim story. He did not bow to Haman, yet he was a devout servant of the Persian King! Why so? Because Haman was evil in the eyes of the Grand Master (adversaries of the Jews are always one and the same as adversaries of the Master of Universe), but the King of Persia was a respectively good servant in the hands of God (again, to a certain degree, regardless of how much he understands his role). The centrality of the Great Master helped to choose intermediate human master for Mordechai. This is the Eternal Lesson from the story of Exodus and from the Book of Esther.

Let’s consider modern day Israel. Whom do Jewish People serve? As long as Israel serves primarily modern human masters – the leaders, whom people granted control over Israel, the Nation will continue falling into the self destruction because their deeds pointing against the Will of the Grand Master. Whenever Israel returns to the Grand Master, Israel will stop serving the un-Godly human leaders (regardless who they are : Jews or Gentiles) and will choose those human leaders/masters who’s deeds will not be in breach of the Will of our Grand Master. Only then all the promised Divine Blessings will be realized. So is for Israel as a Nation. So is for each individual whoever he is. Always remember that any human boss you might have should be served only if he is good in the “eyes” of the Grand Master of All. If Jewish officers and soldiers possibly learned this lesson, while serving their country in IDF, the disaster of the expulsion of Jews from Gaza would not happen and the “country of Hamas” in Gaza would not come into  existence, neither would Iran be able to continue their path of preparations towards the destruction of Israel. Yet, still today servitude of the human leaders goes against the Will of the Grand Master…

The result of the Exodus was meant to be a replacement of  a servitude to human into the servitude to God, becoming servants of God, and, as a result, draw all the goodness and security of life, as He made available for us – His Servants. If we still want to use this nice word Freedom, as applied to Exodus, we must redefine it this way –

The Freedom of man is such a condition  of life when man is free to live by the Eternal Laws of his Creator, whence serving Him first above everybody else. For such a “slavery” or “servitude” brings all the possible goodness this life can offer and also much more important – the personal experience of the Divine Bliss.

Say to God – “You are my Master, with no obligation to benefit me.” ( Psalm 16:2)